Murphy: Football more than a game

It is a season where the verdant riot of summer’s unchecked growth falters, then yields. Leaves turn and flowers fade. Carefree days of summer end, replaced with the regimented lock-step of school and work.

For those of us with college-age children, the brief reunion of the nuclear family ends once again as our children head back off into the wilderness of semi-adulthood.

It can be sad. But autumn is not without its gifts.

No one with even an ounce of poet in him can fail to appreciate the brilliant palette of colors manifested by the deciduous leaves as they waltz into oblivion.

And there is something invigorating about those first few biting breaths of cool air as the humid embrace of summer breaks at last.

Then there is football.

Like most Southern men, I grew up a football fan. My father and my grandfather regaled me with heroic tales of their own days on the gridiron. I traveled all over South Georgia with my father as a child when he served several high school teams as team physician.

And, yes, I played the game myself. It was expected of me. And I transferred that same tradition to my own two sons.

Still, I understand that some people just don’t get it.

I have a friend — an intelligent, creative woman in her forties — who recently remarked that she had “forgotten how much she hated football.” She then qualified the statement by saying that she just did not understand what all the fuss was about.

“It’s just a game,” she said.

But actually, it isn’t.

I have come to the conclusion that human beings require crises. If they are not present, we manufacture them. That is the basis for office gossip, for family intrigue and for all of the myriad headlines we see in this newspaper every day.

Crises and conflict bring texture to life. Without these elements, we get bored. We become lazy and slothful. And that’s not a good thing.

In ancient days, men would hunt for food and fight battles against outsiders, or against wild animals. It was a rite of passage; bonds were forged between fathers and sons. An oral history was created. There was a sense of the torch being passed between the generations.

Men don’t hunt for food as much anymore — and when they do, it is a luxury, not a mandate for survival. Military service is now optional, and is not for everyone.

But football, particularly in the South, is a surrogate for all of this.

William Faulkner once astutely noted that the South’s humiliation in losing the Civil War transformed its collective psyche, giving the region the unique angst of a people defeated on the field of battle. The Southern concept of honor therefore exists in very sharp relief. And the South’s obsession with football is part of that concept.

On a superficial level, football is a war game. Football is somewhat like chess, only more complicated. It is all about strategy and schematics, the capture and yielding of territory. But there is a deeper level to the game.

Like military service, football teaches a young man to value the team over the individual. It instructs one to engage in self-sacrifice for the common good. When a football player is trying to survive the physical grind of three-a-day practices in summer camp, it is his dedication to his teammates that gets him through it.

Football teaches young men to be gracious victors and to learn from failure. In another subtext, football involves no small amount of bonding between fathers and sons. The old warriors talk about their playing days, sharing that experience with their children.

There is a cross-generational linkage here — and it provides young men with a framework of understanding about leadership and teamwork that extends far beyond the gridiron. The concepts stay with them their entire lives.

Lord Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, once said that “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” a reference to his school days at the famous English school. That reference should not be lost on us.

Athletics do not exist simply as an end in themselves. They are, in many ways, a microcosm of our lives.

So when you football non-believers see a bunch of old codgers like myself standing around a water cooler talking incessantly about some great play or reminiscing about a legendary football game from decades past, understand this: It’s not really just about the game. It’s actually about learning how to understand some things in life that make a difference — honor, duty, fair play and perseverance against adversity.

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I received your correspondence postmarked 9/16, Zip Code 31411, along with the Atlantic Monthly article on collegiate sports attached to a clip of my column.

If you wish to engage in some intelligent discourse, great. Post something online here, e-mail me or, at bare minimum, include a return address on your letter. To accuse me of being "naive" when you are simultaneously hiding behind a cloak of anonymity is cowardice, pure and simple.

Since you robbed me of the opportunity of response by not including any of your personal information on your correspondence, let me say three things in my own defense:

1. You misunderstood my article entirely. This piece was more about high school football than anything else (note the references to my own play, as well as my sons'). And anyone who does not recognize that team sports such as high school football are instructive about teamwork, honor and personal responsibility is either ignorant or simply not paying attention.

2. I agree that collegiate athletics is rife with corruption and athlete abuse. As more and more money has made its way into the collegiate athletic scene, we have gotten away from the original ideal of the "student-athlete." But that is a topic for another day.

3. I put my opinions in the newspaper every day. Some people will agree with me; others will disagree. That's okay. My job is to get people to think. But I would never be so insecure about one of my opinions that I would send an anonymous letter to someone's home address regarding that opinion. Not only is that an invasion of my privacy; it also betrays your lack of faith in your own position. In the future, do us all the favor of allowing me to engage you in discussion, either in this forum or via e-mail. Do NOT snail-mail anonymous things to my home. Unmarked envelopes sent to my home address will henceforth be destroyed unopened.

Yeah, but that's fine on the web. Sending anonymous stuff to my home address--which is unlisted, requiring the sender to do a little investigation into my private life--is out of bounds. That's what I have a beef with. Being anonymous on a blog is an understood phenomenon.